


Opalescent puzzles

by Clickclick (TotallyARealPerson)



Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28695786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TotallyARealPerson/pseuds/Clickclick
Summary: If pressed under the pressure of torture and after about twenty dick jokes, Greg House could pinpoint the exact moment when Robert Chase became a puzzle.Because he was never under the pressure of torture, House never needed to realize he couldn't pinpoint a specific moment like all the times before when he realized he didn't care about solving Chase's puzzle as long as it was only his to watch expand.
Relationships: Robert Chase/Greg House
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	Opalescent puzzles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Palaserece](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palaserece/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Healing Touch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4577028) by [Palaserece](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palaserece/pseuds/Palaserece). 



> Warning for wildly OOC internal narration and mentions of sex (no actual on-screen sex).
> 
> After Palaserece's _A Healing Touch_ , in which Chase has miracle healing powers - it focuses on Chase's life figuring out his powers and then his life spent with House.
> 
> As a personal letter to Palaserece: If you want this taken down at any point, simply say so and it'll be down within three days. You don't even have to give a reason.

If pressed under the pressure of torture and after about twenty dick jokes, Greg House could pinpoint the exact moment when Robert Chase became a puzzle.

Chase's interview was an exception to the regular boring rule. He was naturally intelligent and malleable, capable of following House's insane leaps of logic. But according to his given contacts in which he even specified their preferred languages, he'd without a doubt earned everything on his CV, including the double specialty as an intensivist and a physician, his certification in surgery and microsurgery, and his third working specialty in neurosurgery. Yet despite all his qualifications for being a grade-A surgeon, he chose diagnostics as a fourth specialty.

What really sealed the deal was Chase suggesting a prank on everyone: namely, Chase didn't know why he was being hired and House's reasoning would change every single time he was asked. They spent half an hour coming up with probable reasons, only a quarter of which had to do with his medical prowess and fantastic specialty records.

The young blond australian was too pretty and too young to be this accomplished a doctor at twenty-five to not be interesting in some fashion, so House started picking him apart. He seemed to simply love his career and everything to do with it, how the human body functioned when it was healthy and broken and how to knit it better under his careful attention. But that was all elementary. An easy puzzle, twenty-five pieces, it didn't even require effort to complete.

A month into their apparent partnership (as they worked together on hard cases and separately on the five-second ones, and he was at least peripherally useful), Chase asked to give a deep tissue massage.

"You want what?" House had asked incredulously.

He'd said something like "Just one?" with disgusting puppy dog eyes.

So House had rolled his eyes. "Wear pink scrubs for a week and you've got a deal."

"Done."

He'd had deep tissue massages before this, and they all usually hurt horribly, aching for days in a way the vicodin couldn't loosen and made his limp worse for at least a week. He didn't know why he agreed to this one too, but he did.

Their first night together, they didn't eat dinner together. House had crushed a couple pills of vicodin in his dinner and opened his door at the knock. He'd plopped into his cushy chair and Chase had knelt at his feet, beginning with a few glancing touches to assess in a way the medical records and scans never would, and starting.

House curled his hands into tight fists, bracing for the expected agony, but a dozen seconds passed and none came. (Was there a problem with his nerves? ... No, he decided, he could feel Chase's touch perfectly fine - there was just no pain.) His eyes darted back to his young underling, roving curiously over Chase's floppy blond hair, a puzzle to pick apart and put back together. Far more interesting now that he was bigger than House had seen, now that he'd missed puzzle pieces.

House let the massage go on for as long as it took The L-Word to finish streaming, and then sent his subordinate home.

It didn't feel bad, walking the next day. The pain still felt like a thousand lightning-like scalpels digging sharply into his leg, and he still needed his cane, but his balance was maybe a bit better.

(He found a new puzzle. One he'd assumed was easy. But the twenty-five pieces had split into at least a thousand. Where would he be without the thrill of the solve?)

~?~

It took a week for House to invite Chase back to his apartment. He ordered chinese food, a carbs-rich selection Chase seemed to like a few days ago.

He had a scrunched-up nose from the overly greasy noodles, though, so House decided not to deviate from that specific restaurant again. If this pretty puzzle was going to stay with him as long as it took to decode and decipher, it was best he actually like House's company.

Chase gave another deep tissue massage in front of House's couch again the next night. Near the end of the episode, Chase yawned, deep and tired-sounding.

House rather impassively got up from the sofa and efficiently made the bed with a spare pillow the matched his chair and the blanket that was perpetually draped over the back of his couch. "No use in you driving home, and you're not calling in sick tomorrow," House insisted. Chase was asleep very quickly.

~?~

Every night, save the ones where Wilson came and spent the night away from his second wife, Chase gave House a nice deep tissue massage after a dinner of House's perfect meat lover's pizza and Chase's whatever from a thai restaurant.

One night, Chase came early with a bag full of groceries and made lasagna from scratch, puttering around the kitchen and humming. He wasn't a halfway bad cook. It was slightly burned, but the cheese was nicely melted and the sauce had a good consistency.

"This isn't gonna win you any special treatment, ya know," House said, pretending to be interested in the porno he'd switched on.

He felt Chase smiling more than he saw it. "I'm not looking for special treatment. I just want you to stop being in pain."

And that was the moment still when Chase became more interesting again. A thousand pieces became a million, and the sudden certainly that he could spend his entire life figuring out this puzzle

(as the pieces kept multiplying every time he looked away, becoming a bigger puzzle, the Key to a More Interesting Picture, or maybe he didn't need to solve it? and instead simply look into it further and arrange the pieces into something resembling a nice shape? which iridescent cloudy colours would form the distinct shapes that made him so uniquely _Chase_?)

became enticing.

Was enticing even the proper descriptor?

Chase must've somehow noticed something different, because he leaned up and caught House's lips in a quick kiss.

It was quick, fleeting, gentle, barely a kiss - over too quickly. Chase jolted back and was out of his apartment without his jacket before House could get to his feet.

"Damn that wombat," House muttered, and went to bed with less painkiller in his system since before his infarction.

His leg felt better when he woke up.

He got to his feet, and his leg didn't hurt nearly as much as it had before the nightly massages with Chase began. (He'd been taking less vicodin, too - the pangs hurt less like a boulder that wouldn't let up and more like there was a really fat guy sitting on his leg.)

Chase was interesting. He was _interesting_. He chased away the pain, and that was interesting in a way he couldn't remember feeling since Stacy left.

Like most mornings, he woke when the pangs of pain in his leg got too severe to ignore, but when he woke up the sun was shining through his windows instead of moonbeams and his leg hurt less than most days even if it was at least ten hours since he'd popped a vicodin.

Chase had left last night, frenzied, after kissing him. House hissed out through his teeth and limped into the bathroom.

House went by Chase's apartment that morning, entering by carefully picking the lock on his apartment door since he didn't have a spare key anywhere (he'd obviously learned fast from his regularly assigned housebreakings), and looked around.

Practically every wall had a book case. Most of them didn't even have books - there was an entire book case devoted to one-person games, another to various musical instruments that somehow managed to fit, there was one that seemed to serve as a closet, a few in his kitchen that had sliding glass doors that served as cupboards, and others that were plainly weird. Who put a bookshelf in the bathroom, really? He was sure this could go somewhere in Guiness's 'most bookshelves in a residential apartment'. Really, House was forced to wonder where all these bookshelves actually came from - did it come with the house or something? It was probably a design choice, but who the hell would need this many bookshelves?

Chase was a messy little wombat, that was for sure. Dust collected in layers on his shelves, notably on his instruments, the only exception seeming to be his violin and his saxophone.

(Despite himself, House couldn't stop thinking of how many book copies could be put aside if Chase and House combined their personal libraries. At least, without eliminating Chase's collection of sci-fi novellas. But more than a few of the same copies of medical texts had taken up permanent residence in House's bookshelves, and the spare bedroom was barely used, easily converted into a half-library...)

House's ice-blue eyes flitted across Chase's violin and bow. There were creases, fingerprints and fingernail marks in the wood, and the bow looked an inch away from snapping. House put the violin to his chin and drew Chase's bow across his violin. A gentle note filtered out, perfectly tuned. So it was not only well-maintained, but he kept it tuned, playing hard and loud and often enough that the bow strings were starting to thin.

Damn him. He had to be an adequate musician, too?

House put the violin back in its place and moved further.

~?~

When he got to his office, Chase's room was bright with curtains open, the whiteboard still written on from their last case, and completely devoid of the blond. He entered the room and wrote the scrawled note.

_Doing clinic/surgery/specialty hours today. Either of those three. Or something else. I'll find something to distract myself with. Beep me if we have a case.  
RC_

So he was nervous. Probably thought he could give House space and that would be it, and they'd go back to being so impersonal that House could barely make a comment about his muscles without a potential harassment suit going through HR.

Chase had become his apprentice to his partner to companion to friend to... there was still that next step to take.

House spent a few hours tracking down the blond. Finally, at about five o'clock, House found him in the men's bathroom outside the NICU and shoved his tongue down Chase's throat.

The blond turned an enticing red, widening eyes accompanied by a soft moan more felt than heard. Chase was obviously inexperienced with kissing, and he didn't know where to put his hands since one hovered around the small of House's back and the other was somewhere near his shoulderblades, but he leaned into the kiss and nearly stumbled on House's cane when he abruptly pulled back.

"I drove by your apartment," said House, and watched as a lock of Chase's hair fell in his eyes. "It's a shithole. You're moving in with me."

He retreated at this point because he didn't have either the patience to hear Chase either stumble over his words or the stability to listen Chase politely decline. It was a very efficient decision, alright? He'd already been spending most nights with House anyway.

So that weekend, Chase was moved into House's home on Wilson's car.

"And what exactly are you doing to help?" Wilson had asked, incredulous, as he and Chase were unpacking the books on the second room around the futon.

"Moral support," he said, and shoved a handful of chips in his mouth.

Chase snorted. House considered that a win.

~?~

Chase's violin and House's piano sounded very good together, in House's learned opinion. It was fun listening to Chase play with the tempo and House playing extra notes around the melodies, listening to either of them fumble before playing catch-up and outdoing the other, Chase's speed and House's fantastic improv skills going toe to toe, playing excitedly and energetically.

Chase practically danced around the apartment, keeping track of the beat with his steps. House's happiness was more than apparent even without physical tells - he got a sense that Chase could feel his every emotion without verbal input, on the way when House was in a bad mood Chase got him coffee, but on good moods he liked to challenge him on everything. This delicious game of tango; it was theirs and theirs only.

House occasionally composed in his spare time. The first piece he gave Chase was a duet designed for the piano and the violin. House would never forget the blinding smile (or the makeout session) before they started playing together, the music sheets propped up on House's piano stand and Chase at his back.

~?~

Chase, when thoroughly bored of crossword and chess, would pick a random file off the inbox and near-beg to work on it. House would sigh and pretend it was interesting. Oftentimes they were criminally easy; other times, they were good and complicated enough to get House's blood racing, the ones good enough to take the full week. They always moved in symphony, bouncing case ideas off of each other, and the diagnoses were quick and fun.

(Chase is fun, House's mind whispered, and was efficiently silenced.)

His leg got better every week Chase slept next to him. No, House didn't have anything close to a reason for this, be it scientific or emotional or illogical. It was purely illogical. It didn't erase how Chase made him better.

Every few nights, House endured an episode of Star Trek, or maybe one of those movies if he was feeling particularly generous. He got a pair of pillows with the week's groceries because Chase's was lumpy and smelled off. Girly blue hair clips ended up on their night stand. He got a new violin bow, sleek and elegant. Extra shampoo when he noticed Chase's bottle was getting light.

They were small, seemingly insignificant gestures of affection born of mutual respect and (more importantly) the desire not to bite the hand that fed him. But Chase lit up like a christmas tree each time. It was cute SHUT UP BRAIN.

(itwascuteitwascuteitwascute)

It was ~~CUTE~~ mildly concerning. Was Chase really that unaccustomed to affection that every little thing made him glow? ( _Or maybe he's in love with you too_ , a part of his mind that sounded suspiciously like Cuddy drawled.)

He shelved the thought and switched on a stupid sci-fi movie that Chase watched in between massaging House's leg.

"Is this one of the even-numbered ones?" Chase asked, glancing at the title of the movie. "Oh, no, it's one of the even-numbered ones."

"So?"

"Only the odd-numbered ones are good," he said distractedly. "Try the seventh movie, _Generations_. It starts with the android throwing the doctor over the side of a holographic boat and devolves into a story about really bad hostage negotiation."

That sounded more like his type of movie.

~?~

Chase, thoroughly blissed out, rested his forehead on House's shoulder with a dull 'thunk' and _damn_ but House would feel that in his bones tomorrow.

"Immana die."

"Don't be dramatic," House rasped.

"Yur gonna kill me. Whei tha fack didja learrn how ta mayke refract'ry periods so shawt?" Chase groaned, accent thickening from twitchy lust and slurry tiredness after a long twenty-hour surgery on their latest patient, who was now in the ICU being looked after by the nurses.

"Same place I learned about erogenous zones. Porn."

Chase chuckled and finally turned to collapse on the couch, careful to avoid putting weight on House's right leg, which was notably less pained and the flesh less concave than when he started giving the deep tissue massages. "Yu're such ahn aas."

"Yeah," House agreed.

The TV in the background droned dully on an add for dish soap.

It didn't really bother House if Chase so desperately wanted to sleep on the couch. It wasn't really good for House's leg, though, so he carefully got out from under Chase without waking him and got to bed.

And he barely realized until he'd spent about thirty minutes in bed, staring at the ceiling. He'd just gotten up and gone to bed, he'd walked semi-normally on his right leg, and his cane was still in the living room by Chase's feet.

Like any good scientist, he repeated the experiment. He had his cane with him all day and he walked with it, but at home after Chase's massage, he waited until Chase was half-asleep on the couch again before getting and going to the bathroom.

He still had a limp, and he was cautious about putting too much weight on his right leg, but he could walk without his cane.

Without a real game plan, without really knowing what he was feeling beyond pure confusion at the situation and love for Chase, he woke up his wombat. The little start was cute, his look of confusion was cute, he was just disgustingly cute.

"I just walked to the bathroom and back. No cane."

And he watched his wombat's eyebrows briefly rise in confusion until they rolled downwards to look at his leg, distinctly less concave and knarled, and Chase smiled with a hint of pride.

 _I love you,_ House begged would carry as he thumbed at the hem of Chase's pants. "The hookers are gonna miss me."

Chase's smirk looked far too out of place on his face. "Why don't you show me exactly how much they will?"

Thank god they both knew where to put their hands this time.

~?~

The next day, House put all of his and Chase's cases on hold. The dozens of tests he ran on his leg, including a muscle biopsy and an electro-stimulation test, all came up with the same result: miraculously, House's leg was getting better.

Cuddy, the PT department, rehab, they are all going nuts trying to figure out how this happened, begging to assess House and try to figure out how this happened. It was a genuine miracle cure, after all - the stuff of fairytales and hopeful fantasies, the dreams that always ended up disappointing House when he woke from his latest Vicodin hallucination.

The only thing different was Chase's deep tissue massages. Medically irrelevant, simply designed to release tension and loosen muscles. It wasn't meant to stimulate growth or erase pain. This was an anomaly he couldn't explain.

House's MRI scans, the ones he'd had today and the ones from four years ago, side by side, they didn't even look like the same patient.

His eyes narrowed on his walking anomaly with blond hair.

Chase blinked innocently and turned back to his crossword, biting at the end of his pen.

(He knew the answer to House's questions, and House wouldn't be getting those answers. Probably an important reason. House could live with that.)

~?~

House and Chase were at home in bed, Chase deep in REM sleep and House wide awake.

It was near to three am, long past when he should be asleep.

He couldn't sleep.

Every few nights, House waited til Chase was in REM to arrange their bodies so he was spooning Chase and going to sleep. He'd done that again tonight, only he was concentrating less on the warmth of Chase's body and more on his boyfriend's steady pulse, keeping time with one hand cradling his neck and the other pressing against his heart.

Chase was young and attractive. He was a interesting puzzle, a young and unmarried doctor from an absurdly rich family who didn't have to work, or could've easily chosen music or modeling as a profession instead of medicine. He'd taken the harder route. He was still taking the harder route, pursuing House as a romantic partner instead of a younger doctor who was less of an objectively caustic asshole.

House had so many fears about the two of them together. Would he leave when House was healed, no longer damaged? Would the pain and degeneration return without the young blond? What would happen when House told Chase about his love for him?

House took a deep, steadying breath. The inevitable truth about relationships is that either you stay together for life or you break up at some point or another. He'd made a mess out of every relationship he'd ever been in yet, mostly on-again-off-again relationships. He couldn't give them what they wanted with him.

Chase breathed softly, quickly, in a pattern of someone who was obviously asleep but didn't snore.

 _I love you, don't leave me_ , House didn't say, not only because it was the most unbelievably sappy shit EVER, but Chase was also asleep and wouldn't care.

Instead, he kissed his boyfriend's neck and pressed his nose in his miracle's hair, praying to a god he didn't believe in that this wouldn't be the last time he would be sniffing Chase's oddly-combined apple shampoo and coconut conditioner. Dimly, he registered that Chase would probably be satisfied with him since they got along so well now. He hoped this goldilocks phase wouldn't wear off.

Because he was never under the pressure of torture, House never needed to realize he couldn't pinpoint a specific moment like all the times before when he realized he didn't care about solving Chase's puzzle as long as it was only his to watch expand.

~?~

 _"Have you told him you love him?"_ Wilson asked, because he was always a worrier about thing that didn't involve him.

 _"He knows,"_ said House, because it was all too apparent in the way he moved in the mornings, making pancakes the mornings he was particularly happy.

_"You need to tell him, House. I've never seen someone more perfect for you."_

House scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Someone so perfect for me? You sound so cheesy. What romcom did you steal that line from? They want their cliche matchmaker back."

Wilson went back to his paperwork. "The one with the genius asshole and the prodigious asskisser with little to no poker face, where somehow despite the fact that they're both broken and utterly hopeless, they both complete each other without breaking each other apart to find a place."

Complete each other.

Complete each other? Did they really fit together so well everyone around them couldn't unsee it?

"I keep telling you not to read those movie reviews on the internet," said House, and turned toward the open door, swinging it open and turning toward his office. "Reviewers lie."

"Everyone lies," said Wilson, rolling his eyes like he'd heard it a million times before. (Which he hadn't. It was only a one or two thousand, at most.)

"Now you're getting it." House smirked and left the door open on purpose for the sheer pleasure of making Wilson get up and close it himself.

(Predictably, Wilson got up and closed his own door in less than a minute. House laughed.)

House's life was good. He was off the vicodin entirely, he could walk without a cane, he had a good and supportive boyfriend, and his job was fun - colours he couldn't remember putting a name to for a long time existed in Chase's whole being. Colds were still boring, rare allergies accompanied by paraneoplastic syndrome were still interesting, and Chase was always at his right hand, sending electricity ripping through his veins. There was a consistent constant in his life that didn't depend on work.

Life was good.

The pager on his hip beeped a pleasant pattern.

 **ICU** , it read innocently.

He ignored the page. He didn't have any current patients in the ICU.

Because he was such a nice doctor, House didn't ignore the second page, either - it might just have been Super Allergic College Frat Asshole in the clean room.

 **It's Chase** it read, even if it clearly wasn't Chase's pager number.

(Life was good until he saw Chase lying on a hospital floor, bleeding from a crack in his skull, and bleeding profusely, staining one side of his face, his coat, his clothing, his long soft hair he'd forgotten to pin that morning, each little drip down his chin fresh horror.

"We can't stop the bleeding!" cried one of the nurses who was futilely trying to staunch the blood flow.

His hands felt cold. The sense of terror down his spine felt remarkably similar to frigid calm. His legs wobbled - he wished he still had his cane.

"Omega 3, ten milligrams. His blood type's O negative. I can't be objective," he said dully, and it didn't sound like his voice. He bit his tongue, stilled the shaking in his hands, and moved out of the room on autopilot.

He got back to his office, drew his blinds, changed his beeper pattern almost immediately, and started crying only when he didn't have anything else to do.)

~?~

There was a good reason that Cuddy kept making House hire actual department members despite nearly always firing them after five months. Chase, along with every underling before him, was a stopgap measure. He kept House's craziness in check, a dam against a raging tide. He gave House something to delegate instead of doing everything himself. Plus, the usual underlings actually wrote legible words on the charts instead of whatever medical breakthrough House combined through two obscure medical journals his brilliant mind managed to connect.

House stayed at Chase's bedside for three days until the blond woke up from reconstructive surgery of his skull and a bleed in his brain. He was a remarkably quick recovery, far quicker than House or Chase's surgeon had estimated.

He'd woken up briefly earlier, enough time for House and Chase to confess they both loved each other, but House had still barely moved. Delta wave monitor showed he was sleeping soundly, and no sign of apparent disturbance was on the horizon. House was so accustomed to chasing zebras that he rarely considered the horses anymore, and the jaded diagnostician was so concerned about what caused Chase's brain bleed and fainting spell in the first place that he wouldn't leave until another symptom presented itself.

Thus, Cuddy came to visit House's ailing intensivist.

Saying House looked horrible was being generous about it. He had huge purple rings around his eyes, he looked gaunt and pale, and Cuddy didn't really think he'd washed his clothes or even moved from this room since Chase woke up.

"House, you stink. Go take a shower."

"I want to be here," House said softly, in a rare moment of vulnerability. Both his hands were curled around one of Chase's.

"He'll be alright," said Cuddy. "He's just tired, he needs some energy. He'll be awake and chasing after you again in no time at all. But for now, visiting hours are over. Go home, get some rest."

House visibly hesitated a moment, before pressing a kiss to Chase's knuckles and moving away from his bed. "Call if his condition changes," he said, making it somehow sound completely guarded despite obviously being a mess over this whole circumstance.

Cuddy had no use for that kind of armour. She gave a soft smile and hugged House, recoiling with a scrunched-up nose almost instantly. "Ugh, not kidding about the stink. I love you, but go take a bath."

House smirked without the usual devilish gleam in his eyes. "Get a higher neckline."

~?~

Chase woke up as predicted, and was out of the hospital after another day of observation.

After running dozens of tests which all turned up within normal parameters, the incident was recorded in Chase's medical history as an anomaly. House kept an eye on everything, but the blond seemed fine.

Better than fine; he was good. Better than bad, at least. (Gah, that was a really bad joke. He needed better reference material.)

It didn't stop House from taking his pulse every night for months, and every so often again afterward, or when his paranoia was bad enough to get out his medical file and review the memorized pages and scans while keeping a thumb on Chase's wrist, absentmindedly counting.

(One of these nights, Chase woke up. "Greg, what are you still doing awake?"

"Nothing. Go back to sleep, wombat."

"M'kay. Y'know you can tell me about anything bothering you, right?"

"Yeah, I know. It's nothing important, don't worry your pretty head. Go back to sleep."

Chase hummed low in his throat. "Don't stay up too late."

"I won't," he said, which he knew was a lie. He could never fall back asleep on nights like these.)

It still never quite faded from the back of House's mind. Chase's long hair hid his surgery scars; they were only faintly visible when Chase clipped back his hair for surgical procedure, he didn't show any sign of being distressed with the fact he almost died from an unexplained brain bleed, and he acted exactly as he always had. None of his judgement, skills, or emotions were compromised. His sleep was normal as ever. He acted as though it was a simple week-long vacation from work.

It was odd.

(It was exactly like Chase to be this frustrating.)

~?~

Every few nights after sex, and sometimes during sex, House looked close at Chase's back.

If there was a higher being, they'd obviously made a mistake. Chase was obviously a miracle. House's miracle.

House's thumbs traced the inside of Chase's shoulder blades. "My miracle."

Chase laughed at that. "You don't believe in miracles."

"Nope. But you are my miracle, wombat."

Chase turned to hide his laughing snorts in House's collarbone. "I love you too, xīn gān."

"Love you more, stupid," House smiled.


End file.
